WilkinsonEyre Learning by Wilkinson Eyre Architects

Learning

Learning is a journey of personal discovery. While education remains focused on finding individual potential, it is increasingly a social activity, relying on environments that support new and interactive types of learning. These environments need to be flexible and adaptable, allowing teachers and lecturers to direct and facilitate whilst encouraging integration between subject areas. Technology has transformed the learning landscape – wireless communications, laptops and intelligent building systems all support a more mobile, fluid approach which is centred on the learner.

WilkinsonEyre have delivered education environments across the full spectrum of learning ages – including an all-through school for the BSF (Building Schools for Future) Programme, which incorporated pre-school, primary and secondary accommodation; undergraduate and graduate study environments; and laboratory and research space of the most specialist nature. Despite these designs spanning a range of requirements, there are commonalities that can be drawn out in the process for each.

Buildings for education are increasingly outward-facing, supporting lifelong learning and local regeneration as well as sharing their facilities with the community. Alongside this concern for wider economic sustainability, environmental performance has become a key issue, with the whole-life value of the building, its systems, performance and materials all important considerations.

High quality architecture brings substantial improvements to the learning environment, and can have a positive effect on educational outcomes. WilkinsonEyre brings best practice from other building typologies to the design of education buildings, raising the status and profile of these spaces to become more appealing to users and funders. We have an extensive portfolio of education work, ranging from leading universities to local schools, and from generic teaching spaces through to specialist research laboratories and public learning environments in libraries and museums.

Stafford Critchlow Director, Head of Education

1 Dyson Campus Expansion

Bridge of Aspiration, Royal Ballet School

Wellcome Collection

1 Campus Masterplanning

Wellcome Genome Campus Masterplan in South Cambridgeshire received planning consent in 2024

Campus Masterplanning

A campus development plan unifies an academic institution by fostering academic collaboration and projecting the values of the institution to the outside world. WilkinsonEyre bring wide-ranging experience to bear in generating campus masterplans with a clear focus on drawing out distinctiveness, creating identity and a deep understanding of phasing and decant issues that allow new developments to be created with minimal disruption to the life of the organisation.

Complex masterplans with extensive stakeholder consultation have been completed or are ongoing for leading universities at Exeter, Warwick, Southampton and Cambridge. For the Guys & St Thomas’s Academic Health Campuses at London Bridge and Westminster Bridge we developed masterplans that combine commercial science clusters with healthcare facilities, translational research and academic teaching.

This involved mediation with all three parties (the NHS Trust, Kings College London and the Guy’s & St Thomas’s Charity) as well as local authority and GLA consultations to achieve a costed development framework, with phased delivery around existing hospital facilities.

Our masterplanning work is closely informed by our work on individual academic buildings as well as building typologies from the other sectors that we work in. This ensures that our masterplans are underpinned by realistic and deliverable development and planning strategies. Our masterplans also carefully integrate architectural and landscape design and this holistic approach leads to outcomes that are truly transformative.

1 Westminster Bridge Campus for Guys & St Thomas’s NHS Trust & King’s College London

2 Highfield Campus, University of Southampton study model

3 Dyson Campus

Teaching & Learning 2

The most positive learning environments address the social aspects of learning and are flexible – this can take the form of social study space for project work outside formal teaching areas: locating what would previously have been an ‘ICT room’ into an open study area that can be timetabled or used more informally.

Increasingly education is delivered outside the seminar room and there is a need for bookable group working spaces for self-directed project work - such as study booths or small group rooms. The social study spaces on the balcony at Exeter Forum, overlooking the main concourse, are popular and fill up first in the morning but are balanced by dedicated quiet and silent reading rooms for those students who prefer a calmer environment. The seminar block close by is timetabled for teaching over 2 terms but becomes library expansion space during the summer term thereby ensuring optimum space utilisation through the academic year.

Teaching & Learning

Learning centres at museums, such as the Wellcome Collection, receive visiting students and exhibit their objects and images to give the spaces character and focus.

We understand the requirements for traditional teaching and learning spaces from raked lecture theatres to flatfloored seminar rooms. This understanding has allowed us to refine our approach to designing and improving these spaces with things like the addition of natural light – as with the raked lecture theatre at Queen Mary University of London’s new Graduate Centre – or through the colocation and flexible timetabling of spaces as at Exeter Forum. We have also designed a range of other more interactive teaching spaces that use the latest in digital technology to support new ways of delivering curriculum. It is often the combination of these different space types –both formal and informal – that support the best teaching and learning outcomes.

1 Bridges to Prosperity, Rwanda 2018

2 The Forum, University of Exeter

3 Earth Sciences, University of Oxford

The Forum, University of Exeter

WilkinsonEyre was appointed in 2008 to design this new centrepiece for the University of Exeter’s famously hilly Streatham Campus. Working with the natural features of the site, the scheme creates a ‘green corridor’ to connect the Forum with the wider landscape.

Central to the scheme is an undulating timber gridshell roof, which shelters and unifies a series of new student-focused spaces within. The fluid form contrasts with the orthogonal brick volumes of the existing buildings on this steeply sloping site, and respects key views across the city to Dartmoor.

The Forum features an extended and refurbished library, new learning spaces, student services, catering and retail outlets, a landscaped plaza and new University reception as part of a £450 million capital investment programme which has propelled Exeter into the top ten UK universities.

The undulating timber gridshell roof shelters and unifies a series of new student-focused spaces within while also relating to the natural contours of the wider site.

Sustainability was an important driver in the development of the scheme, which has been designed to meet a series of a challenging environmental targets, and in doing so the project achieved a BREEAM Excellent accreditation.

Queen Mary University of London

At Queen Mary, University of London, we established a strong lasting relationship in 2006 which has seen the completion of a number of projects on their Mile End Campus.

Our work for the university includes a scheme for an extension to the existing building to provide state of the art laboratories, teaching and research facilities over six floors.

For the School of Mathematical Sciences, a new foyer and social/study space has helped establish a strongly identifiable entrance to the campus, clad with glass rainscreen panels, the form of which has been generated by a Penrose tiling pattern.

The Arts Two humanities building, completed in 2012, accommodates the entire History Depar tment and other faculty resources including a timber-clad 300-seat auditorium and foyer, centrally-bookable seminar rooms, a top floor senior common room and 60-seat film and drama studio, licensed for public performances.

Our most recent project for the University is a new graduate centre, comprising a 200-seat lecture theatre with a large foyer/café space, flexible graduate study areas, and accommodation for the School of Economics and Finance. A series of landscape improvements surround the new building and significantly enhance the centre of the University’s campus.

Arts Two, Queen Mary University of London

This humanities building accommodates the entire History Department and includes a timber-clad 300-seat auditorium and foyer, centrally-bookable seminar rooms and a top floor senior common room. A 60-seat film and drama studio, licensed for public performances, projects over the pavement and is clad in glass panels with a digitally printed artwork by the artist Jacqueline Poncelet.

A glazed corridor with external brise-soleil acts as a buffer zone to the first and second floors, sheltering the academic office space from the busy Mile End Road outside, such that they are all naturally ventilated and look into an internal courtyard.

School of Mathematical Sciences,

Queen Mary

University of London

This project continues WilkinsonEyre’s relationship with Queen Mary, University of London, following our work on the design of the Arts Two Building. The scheme creates a new foyer and social/study space for the School of Maths, establishing a strongly identifiable entrance to the campus on the Mile End Road in East London. It also includes the refurbishment of a lecture theatre to the highest environmental and acoustic standards.

The existing maths building, constructed in 1967, is a prominent landmark on the Mile End Road, marking the western end of the campus. Along this frontage there are many different buildings of disparate styles, and the new extension is a distinctive low level form, introducing coherence at street level and encouraging pedestrian movement into the campus.

The extension is a single storey structure clad with glass rainscreen panels, the form of which has been generated by a Penrose tiling pattern – a narrative response to the academic school, where Sir Roger Penrose is a visiting professor. As well as informing the geometry of the form, a smaller scale subset of Penrose tiling is applied to each glass panel as a graphic pattern.

Graduate Centre, Queen Mary University of London

WilkinsonEyre was selected to design this new Graduate Centre for Queen Mary, University of London in August 2012. The project marks a significant anniversary for Queen Mary as it celebrates 125 years since it began life as a philanthropic centre that brought education and culture to the East End of London. As well as providing a dedicated graduate centre, this project has contributed significant urban improvements to this part of the campus: a new landscaped quadrangle, courtyard, and a back-of-pavement café onto Bancroft Road provides extensive outdoor amenity space. A new CHP energy centre serving nine buildings also forms part of the project.

The form of the building responds dynamically to the constrained site with a series of stepped bands of accommodation. Interior spaces are filled with daylight and support both formal and

informal teaching and learning while a rooftop terrace provides expansive views over the city.

The ground floor of the Graduate Centre comprises a glass-sided 200-seat lecture theatre with a large foyer/café space and flexible graduate study areas. Upstairs are dedicated graduate student services, as well as seminar rooms and a ‘Harvard-style’ teaching facility.

The School of Economics and Finance is housed over four floors and provides space for 60 individual academic offices, computer laboratories, postgraduate study areas and a city-style trading room. On the top is a floating glass box that contains graduate reading rooms and a common room that opens onto a large outdoor terrace.

Project

Pleiades,

University of Cambridge

WilkinsonEyre was appointed in 2015 to design three buildings as part of the phased redevelopment of the New Museums Site for the University of Cambridge.

Working within a masterplan for the wider site, the project combines elements of new build with the extensive refurbishment of several existing buildings. Two new external courts will also be created as part of the project through the strategic removal of existing buildings. The landscaped courts will open up the site, improving the setting of the new and existing buildings, and creating considerable amenity value for the University and the wider public in the heart of the historic city.

At the centre of the site, a new building houses shared teaching facilities, an information and research hub for the University Library, academic accommodation, and an energy centre serving the whole site. This building will also include a section of retained façade from a

building dating from the mid-19th century as well as connections to an adjacent Grade II listed building.

Along the southern edge of the site, a 1930s building will be carefully demolished while an older section of historic façade facing Pembroke Street is retained. A new building will then constructed behind the retained façade to accommodate academic offices and research laboratories. A large external arcade is created at ground floor level below the building and three new openings are formed in the retained façade to provide improved access to the site for pedestrians.

The locally listed Old Metallurgy Building will also be extensively refurbished to provide a new home for another academic department. Office space, a library and study centre, common room, and a range of laboratory and research spaces will be provided within the refurbished building.

Wellcome Collection

London

Awards

2017 Structural Steel Design Award, Merit

2016 AJ Retrofit Award, Cultural Buildings, Winner

2016 Civic Trust Award, Commendation

Wellcome Trust launched Wellcome Collection in 2007, based in the Trust’s former 1930s headquarters in central London, providing a forum for the public to explore the connections between medicine, life and art.

WilkinsonEyre has transformed the venue, creating new galleries and spaces to meet the overwhelming demand the Collection has enjoyed. The visitor experience is enriched through a more legible public entrance and an expanded atrium. Crucially, a new dynamic staircase encourages better circulation between the ground and second floors, inviting visitors to the refurbished Research Library, existing and new gallery spaces and a destination restaurant.

The redevelopment creates a major new thematic gallery which hosts yearlong exhibitions and a dedicated youth

events studio space to support a wide range of activities including workshops, performances and discussion events. The Hub, a new interdisciplinary research centre, and a Science Media Centre, also encourage engagement and collaborations between the scientific community and the public.

A series of characterful spaces have been created throughout the building: A new education suite (below left) is designed to encourage flexibility and collaboration with whiteboard walls, integrated display and sliding/folding partitions that allow the spaces to be used in different modes. The refurbished reading room (below right) integrates exhibitions along with space for informal learning and more formal research activities.

London South Bank University

WilkinsonEyre won a design competition in September 2016 for a significant new project for London South Bank University. The St George’s Quarter Development is located on the University’s Southwark Campus and is made up of four main parts.

Facing London Road, the Creative and Design Centre will house a large exhibition space, a new student support centre and a variety of flexible studio and teaching spaces.

The new Learning Centre will accommodate spaces for general teaching for several different disciplines along with dedicated postgraduate study and social space.

A new performing arts centre will include a 200-seat theatre located behind the retained façade of a Grade II listed former chapel. A 60-seat studio theatre space will also be provided along with rehearsal and back of house spaces.

The scheme also includes the extensive refurbishment and reconfiguration of the adjacent 1970's London Road Building into the new LSBU Hub, completed in 2022. This element provides new catering and sports facilities as well as enhanced lecture spaces. The LSBU Hub also accommodates the new library and learning resources centre forming a communal heart to the campus. The strategic use of innovative architectural and structural interventions transforms the uninviting, institutional existing building into a warm, open and welcoming learning environment.

The different parts of the wider scheme are connected by a lightweight, undulating roof structure that encloses a large internal concourse to create a new focal point and gateway to the University. A series of new external spaces are also created around the buildings to provide much-needed external amenity space for the University’s very urban campus.

Chapel Theatre (left)

The Existing London Road Building (right).

The transformed LSBU Hub (below)

Exemplar

Scheme,

Building Schools for the Future

WilkinsonEyre, together with educational consultant Graham Parker, was selected by the DfES in 2003 to develop an exemplary secondary school design. The objective of the exemplar design exercise was to offer an architecture that supported innovative learning and teaching methods as well as providing a stimulating and fun built environment, adopting best practice from schools and other building types. The team took a kit of parts approach, developing a series of components that could be applied to a variety of different sites and scenarios. The basic building block is a two-storey ‘learning cluster’, each housing up to 300 students and arranged around a central agora, inspired by the ancient Greek marketplace.

The same team was then appointed to apply this exemplar scheme to the design of the John Madejski Academy in Reading, which opened in 2007 and was the first of the exemplar schemes to be built in the UK. The kit of parts has also been applied to several of the schools designed for the Bristol BSF initiative.

The

Dyson STEAM Building, Gresham’s School

Norfolk

The Dyson STEAM Building is a new centre for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics at Gresham’s School, Norfolk.

The building's layout and scale has been designed to create a positive relationship with the school chapel and Britten building, creating a traditional three-sided quadrant around the chapel lawn.

An understated and elegant palette of materials blends the new architecture with its surroundings, while the building is expressively future facing in its internal layout and integration of man-made and natural systems.

Science, Research & Development

Our experience of designing buildings for science, research and development ranges from facilities for commercial product development through to highly specialised university research laboratories

The buildings that best enable research and development (R&D) are specific in providing particular technical facilities for experiments (for example the metal-free geochemistry laboratories, a magnetic ‘field free’ room in our Earth Sciences building for University of Oxford) and also flexible in allowing different research groups to form, expand and contract.

Critically they are also buildings that are social –encouraging user interaction and enabling crossdisciplinary working and innovation. Best practice considerations of good daylighting, utilisation and wellplanned space make it a place people choose to be. Whether contributing to the public understanding of science through a science museum gallery or manifesting itself in a whole building dedicated to a particular

activity, architecture can be an important signifier; one that encourages a sense of coming together around a common purpose and acts as a beacon to the outside world, partners and funders.

Thoughtful architecture brings substantial improvements to the research environment and positively effects outcomes. WilkinsonEyre brings useful experience from other building typologies to the design of R&D buildings, raising the status and profile of these spaces to become more appealing to users and funders. Our specialist portfolio encompasses leading university applied and academic research facilities, public interactive science centres and commercial product development facilities housing design, engineering and advanced manufacturing processes.

1 Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens

2 Hauser Forum, University of Cambridge

3 Innovation Building, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Earth Sciences, University of Oxford

Located on Oxford's South Parks Road in a sensitive context, this new building of 7,100m² for the University of Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences has not only been designed to meet the academic requirements of the department, but also signal to the wider public the Department's interests and concerns. This is achieved through a distinctive narrative wall formed of horizontal bands of limestone carefully selected by geologists in the Department. This gives the building a strong geological ‘identity’ but also acts as a teaching aid and organisational device, dividing the stone-clad laboratory wing from the glazed office wing.

Integrated into the building is specialist infrastructure including ultra-clean geochemical laboratories, experimental petrology and large computational facilities,

alongside more generic spaces for writeup and relaxation. Internally the building is structured around a simple relationship diagram of laboratory wing and office wing, divided by the narrative wall and with an atrium ‘hinge’ between.

The laboratory wing includes a series of specialist research spaces including metal-free labs for geochemistry – which at 345m² are the largest of their kind in the world. The ground floor contains undergraduate teaching and common areas, a library and lecture theatre.

1 Teaching Laboratories

2 Foyer

3 Seminar

4 Administration

5 Library Entrance

A new 17,000m2 flexible commercial life sciences building at Oxford North for developers Stanhope and Thomas White Oxford on behalf of St John’s College.

The campus is strategically located on the northern edge of the historic city and is bounded by the A34, A40 and A44 roads. Working within a masterplan with outline planning consent we collaborated with the architects on adjacent plots to develop complimentary schemes that sit comfortably in the context, with particular focus on sensitive views from the surrounding area. The building will accommodate a 60:40 mix of laboratory space to open plan office space.

The design includes a new landscaped square connecting to the rest of the campus as well as a further landscaped area facing the A40.

The building is one of three being designed concurrently and a common set of design strategies and elements are being developed by the design teams across the three plots to improve efficiency and streamline in-use operation and maintenance. Planning consent has been secured and a construction partner is being appointed early to drive efficiency and maximise the use of design for offsite manufacture, assembly, and asset management

1 Reception

2 Central Core and WCs

3 Flexible Tenant Laboratory Space 4 Western entrance with end of trip facilities

5 Separate delivery entrance 6 Services Pavilion and Cycle Store

Dyson Campus Expansion

Malmesbury

Involved in the development of the Dyson headquarters and factory since the 1990s, and WilkinsonEyre gone on to masterplan and design individual phases of the pioneering Dyson engineering campus in Malmesbury.

The overall architectural concept for the expansion follows the existing design philosophy of creating lightweight modern pavilions in a landscaped setting. Phase 1 comprises a new research and design development building; a café; energy centre; new car park; sports facility and helipad.

The nearby café and meeting room pavilion is the social heart of the campus. It's projecting roof profile and highly transparent glazing system contrast with the larger Dyson 9.

Dyson 9 is conceived as a minimal, reflective glass pavilion, its primary use is for sensitive research and development activities. The external surface is a reflective glazed material to obscure views into the building while maintaining outward views and daylighting the interiors; it also has the effect of ‘disappearing’ into the landscape by offering a mirror to the established surroundings. A key driver of the design has been flexibility to ensure the building has a long-term adaptability.

Advanced

Manufacturing and Design Centre,

Swinburne University of Technology

Melbourne

WilkinsonEyre was appointed together with SKM in autumn 2010 to design a new building for Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

The new building, located on the University’s Hawthorn Campus, is a centre of excellence in manufacturing innovation and collaborative learning that embraces state of the art design, reflecting Swinburne University’s reputation as a leading research institute with strong technology and business connections.

The bold, landmark design comprises a six storey block floating above a retained Victorian façade at street level. Sculpted vertical fins, inspired by engine turbine blades, are modelled to achieve optimum solar shading while achieving transparency and an ethereal three-dimensional shape to the outer skin of the building.

Wisley

Hilltop, the RHS Home of Gardening Science at Wisley, Surrey, combines state-of-the-art-scientific laboratories, extensive public exhibition space, teaching studios and new facilities for their nationally important Herbarium, science and library collections.

The project delivers a major upgrade and step change supporting the delivery of the new RHS Science Strategy, enabling high quality new scientific research and sharing of best practice through public engagement in horticultural sciences. The centre will help to safeguard the internationally important scientific collections for present and future generations.

This new facility provides the environmental conditions essential to keep these national reference collections secure, and ensure they remain available for the purposes of study maintaining their integrity, quality and value as important scientific resources.

A new events space, cafe, educational spaces and a prestigious science and public library also enhance the visitor experience. Three new specialist science and educational gardens on each flank of the building act as living laboratories to inspire and share ‘best practice’ for gardeners.

Adaptive Reuse

As architects, we are always building upon the rich legacy of the past. Whilst we need to envisage new ways of working & living, and adopt new approaches to construction, we can utilise and enjoy the beauty and inherent strength of historic buildings and townscape –whether a listed heritage asset or a utilitarian structure of more recent date suitable for reuse. Our approach to building reuse begins with respect, understanding and a creative approach to reinterpretation.

Reusing existing buildings creates a complex brief which can’t be resolved through “off the shelf” design responses. An old building presents a broad spectrum of possibilities; finding new ways to utilise a space; using extant features; bringing back to life a building’s best assets; identifying which elements are of low interest and which contribute value and significance; in the process creating a unique project by juxtaposing old and new components.

1 National Waterfront Museum

2 We The Curious, Bristol

Weston Library, University of Oxford

The Weston Library, Oxford, is a vital resource for academic research. Part of the University of Oxford’s world famous Bodleian Library, the Grade Il listed building was originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in the 1930s.

In 2006, WilkinsonEyre was appointed to refurbish the library as a new cultural and intellectual landmark. The project has created high-quality storage for the Library’s valuable special collections, space for the support of advanced research, and expanded public access to its great treasures via the new exhibition galleries. New facilities include a digital media centre, a visiting scholars centre, a lecture theatre, and a suite of seminar rooms to enable teaching and master-classes based on the Library’s special collections. These

facilitate contemporary research practices and techniques, supporting the library’s academic users, as well as enabling public interaction with the Library’s collections and treasures. The newly refurbished Library includes a world-class conservation workshop and facilities.

Careful consideration has been made to the Library’s central position within the surrounding cityscape, opening up new ground level entrances to encourage public access from Broad Street and knit the building into the wider urban grain.

Fry Building: School of Mathematics, University of Bristol

WilkinsonEyre was appointed in 2012 for the remodelling and refurbishment of the 10,000m² Grade II-listed Fry Building at The University of Bristol, formerly used for Biological Sciences, into a new home for the School of Mathematics.

Key to this design is relocating the entrance from the west to the north, with new public realm landscaping and a spacious foyer, giving access to the heart of the building.

The project includes the formation of a new, central lecture theatre and raised courtyard garden accessed via a glazed three-storey atrium. Mathematical patterns have been incorporated into the design of the atrium structure, based on a Voronoi 3D transformation of the coffered ceiling of the entrance foyer.

The refurbishment provides a range of academic office accommodation set over four floors, with undergraduate teaching and social study space on the ground and lower ground floors. Careful attention has been given to the design of circulation spaces to encourage interaction between students and academic staff.

New College

University of St Andrews

Fife

WilkinsonEyre has been appointed to design a new flagship project for the University of St Andrews in Scotland. New College, as the project is known, will establish a centre of excellence for teaching, research and engagement in the social sciences. The 11,500m2 building will also be the home of the School of International Relations and the University’s newly formed Business School. The site occupies a large and prominent location within the historic town and the project includes the sensitive incorporation and refurbishment of three existing buildings including the former Madras College – a Category A-listed neo-Jacobean school building completed in 1833.

The ground floor of New College will incorporate a wide range of facilities for teaching and learning connected by informal study spaces, a café and an external courtyard garden. The designs also include the enclosure of the courtyard within the Madras College building to create a striking new internal space within the listed building. The upper floors are arranged around a second courtyard garden and accommodate workspace for the academic schools, a common room and a dedicated suite of teaching facilities for delivering Executive Education programmes. The top floor of the building contains a bar and reception space alongside a dining room that will host a range of University events and enjoys expansive views across the town and the Fife landscape.

City

Law School, City University of London

WilkinsonEyre was appointed in 2012 by City University of London to design a new home for the City Law School, currently spread across three buildings at Gray’s Inn. The new facility will provide high quality academic space to support the University’s strategic plans, while at the same time creating a sense of community and place on a site that has previously been under-utilised.

Located within the boundaries of the Northampton Square Conservation Area, the design reinstates the historic building line to the north of Sebastian Street. The form of the building negotiates between the scale of the Georgian residential streets and the larger more varied grain of Goswell Road, a key arterial road into the City of London close to ‘Tech City’ at Old Street. The scheme is conceived as a series of unified blocks and includes two retained 1920s light industrial buildings arranged around a central atrium space.

At the corner of Sebastian Street and Goswell Road a striking seven storey glazed tower employs an innovative ventilated double-skin with patterned interlayers to control temperature and glare. Not only a marker for City Law School, this will be a new eastern gateway to the City University of London Campus.

The new Law School will contain a variety of study and learning spaces including a moot court, library, study areas and academic offices.

Skills & Vocational Training 5

Starting with two projects for City & Islington College we have worked with a number of Further Education institutions over twenty years and are well-versed in developing designs to suit the complex briefs that are often required. Most recently this has been with the United Colleges Group for their project in Wembley which includes construction skills workshops, English for Speakers of other Languages [ESOL] teaching and a Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties [PMLD] unit. In Bristol as part of the Building Schools for the Future [BSF] programme we designed four schools including Bristol Brunel Academy, the RIBA award-winning first BSF School, and the Bridge Learning Campus ‘all through’ school – a facility that spans from early years education through to adult and vocational training. At Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, the William Harvey building is a specialist training facility for nurses.

Skills & Vocational Training

"Bridging Art & Science" is a recurring theme that runs through many of our projects. In the educational arena this has taken the form of a number of learning centres at museums, notably at the Science Museum and the Wellcome Collection, and now as part of the government initiative to combine arts and science education in schools with the STEAM* building at Gresham’s School in in Norfolk.

[*STEAM = Science & Technology interpreted through Engineering and the Arts based in Mathematics]

1&2 Centre for Business, Arts and Technology, City and Islington College

Capital City Project, Museum of London

Wilkinson Eyre won the design competition in 2019 for a further education building in Wembley for United Colleges Group. The multi-storey building includes a complex mix of specialist workshop areas ranging from vocational training in brick-laying, joinery, plastering and plumbing to hairdressing and TV studios.

The building is located in a prominent location on Olympic Way, the main concourse approach from Wembley Park underground station and the national stadium, commonly known as ‘Wembley Way.’ The development of the building in such a distinct location is intended to promote the importance of further education with the architecture making a confident statement about the value placed on education and skills in the surrounding community. This will be visible to those within the community on a day to day basis as well as the thousands that pass by on the stadium event days.

The form consists of three horizontal blocks stacked over eight floors, with each volume representing the key functions of the building within them. The vocational workshops are situated on the ground and first floors levels, forming a lower podium volume. On top of the podium, the set back central volume contains the main student concourse, student support and Learning Resource Centre amenities, opening out onto a large planted amenity deck, overlooking Wembley Way with great views of the stadium. Above this the upper four floors include the general teaching accommodation, forming a cantilevering block.

The three component parts of the building are expressed externally by contrasting materials and rhythms. They are also linked internally by a central atrium with a ribbon of circulation running up through the building. United Colleges Group,

Bridge Learning Campus

This new multi-generational campus, which forms part of the Bristol BSF initiative, ambitiously combines five educational centres – a nursery and primary school, severe learning difficulties unit (SLD), student support centre and vocational college – on one campus. With an overall capacity for 1,685 students, it is the first of its kind in Bristol and one of very few allthrough schools in the UK.

With central catering and administration serving the site from the heart of the campus, each ‘school’ maintains its identity within the larger whole. Spaces for primary and SLD children are self-contained but benefit from close proximity to the central learning resource centre and music facilities.

The sloping site is used to provide a change in scale across the campus, with singlestorey primary and SLD facilities at the top of the hill stepping down to more ‘civic’ two-storey accommodation around the main entrance.

Awards

2009 Bristol Civic Society Award

2008 Constructing Excellent Award; The Legacy Award

Centre for Business, Arts and Technology, City and Islington College

London

This project forms part of City and Islington College’s ongoing rationalisation programme, and follows our initial commission for the design of their Centre for Lifelong Learning at Finsbury Park. This scheme includes the upgrade of an existing 1960s building along with the creation of a new four-storey extension.

The upgrading represents an innovative exemplar in the regeneration of this building type, which is common to the education sector. A dramatic new glass skin, open at the top and bottom, sits a metre in front of the existing 80m façade on the Camden Road frontage. This buffer zone modifies the internal environment of the existing building, allowing occupants to open the windows for ventilation without suffering noise or pollution from the busy road outside.

The skin is composed of accentuated horizontal bands and striated with four different degrees of translucency, allowing for digital messaging to be projected along its length.

2006 AIA / UK Excellence in Design Award

William Harvey Building, Anglia Ruskin University

Chelmsford

This phase of development at Anglia Ruskin University’s Rivermead Campus (masterplanned by WilkinsonEyre) provides a new faculty building for the School of Health.

The five-storey, linear structure follows the curved spine of the masterplan and includes a range of highly flexible general and specialist teaching facilities – including a suite of medical ‘wards’ for vocational training – along with academic and administrative staff workspaces.

The building is arranged programmatically, with teaching spaces on the lower floors and staff accommodation above. It has been designed as a predominantly naturally ventilated building, with the specialist spaces that require supplementary mechanical ventilation and cooling placed in the centre of each floorplate. This efficient use of energy has resulted in an annual energy consumption of 18.9kg CO2/m².

Circulation areas have been left deliberately generous in anticipation of a future increase in users to allow uncongested interchange between classes and break-out spaces for students to exchange ideas.

The teaching spaces are highly flexible, making extensive use of folding partitions to create extendable spaces for a range of class sizes. The building is clad in terracotta tiles, and makes use of horizontal bands of colour that are ‘shuffled’ across the façades in a pattern informed by images of DNA chromatography.

Student Housing

Having been at the forefront of campus development for many years, WilkinsonEyre are well placed to deliver accommodation whose planning and architecture anticipate student lifestyles while fostering a strong sense of community. For Dyson, the practice has designed a new ‘undergraduate village’ of 67 accommodation pods – each for an individual student and a clubhouse (the Roundhouse) comprising a café, bar, lecture hall and study space. The village also includes shared amenities including kitchens, communal spaces, laundry rooms, a reception and amenity space, all located at the heart of the campus.

For the University of Cambridge, WilkinsonEyre has delivered the first phase of a new development north west of the city, having also been a part of the masterplanning team. The overall development comprises 3,000 dwellings, 2,000 student bed spaces and 100,000m² of commercial space, as part of a 150-hectare expansion of the University.

1 Co:MK:U, Milton Keynes University

2 Winchester Road, University of Oxford

Lot 1 at Eddington plays a pivotal role in the new North West Cambridge masterplan. A large foodstore creates an anchor for the diverse mix of uses throughout the area. A lightweight canopy structure in the open-air marketplace creates a dynamic and vibrant place to congregate at the heart of the development. The new central CHP energy centre serves the entire development and is devised as a distinctive element which references the tradition of Cambridge chimneys, as well as giving a strong identity to the scheme.

All residential units were designed to the former Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5. 117 one and two-bedroom apartments are configured within three five-storey blocks. Shared amenity space is provided by roof terraces and an internal courtyard. Most units are dual-aspect, with good day lighting, cross and natural ventilation.

Single-aspect duplex units with ‘walk-ups’ to three storeys have been developed for single-sided accommodation which back onto the service yard, supermarket and energy centre.

In addition to work on Lot 1, WilkinsonEyre was also part of the masterplanning team for the overall North West Cambridge development, which comprises 3,000 dwellings, 2,000 student bed spaces and 100,000m² of commercial space, as part of a 150-hectare expansion of the University.

A series of maisonette apartments (opposite) address the street with each vertical block articulated by entrances, projecting bay windows, and a set-back top floor. The open-air marketplace creates a dynamic and vibrant place to congregate at the heart of the development. Shared amenities like cycle parking are carefully integrated into the neighbourhood plan.

Dyson Institute of Engineering & Technology

Malmesbury

WilkinsonEyre delivered the undergraduate village and associated student facilities for the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology based on the Dyson Malmesbury Campus. The landscaped village comprises of 62 timber modular housing pods, which were fabricated off site, with communal amenities and a central social and learning hub, the Roundhouse. As well as establishing a new typology in student accommodation, the project breaks new ground in the design, masterplanning and precision engineering of truly modular prefabricated building technologies for rapid on-site construction.

Stacked up to three pods high, the units are innovatively arranged and angled in the campus’ landscape to provide every student with high-quality accommodation. With wellbeing being a prime design consideration, each pod has been designed

with natural ventilation and large, tripleglazed windows, individually angled to give each resident an expansive view across the campus, while the communal spaces were developed to promote interaction and social gatherings.

The institute allows for the next generation of students to work alongside Dyson engineers four days a week on the Campus and spend one day in the classroom. The school is a practical initiative of Dyson’s to improve engineering education in the UK and bridge the skills gap. Awards

2020 International Architecture Award

2019 World Architecture News Award

Further Projects

Cooled Conservatories, Gardens by the Bay

Singapore

One of the most ambitious cultural projects of recent years, the innovative Cooled Conservatories have become Singapore landmarks. The two main conservatory structures are among the largest climate-controlled glasshouses in the world, covering an area in excess of 20,000m², and showcase the flora of those environments most likely to be affected by climate change.

Comprising three gardens covering a total of 101 hectares, the overall project was central to the government’s visionary plan to transform the city state into a ‘cityin-a-garden’. Part of a British-led team, WilkinsonEyre’s brief was to design an architectural icon, a horticultural attraction and a showcase for sustainable technology.

We the Curious was the first of a new generation of Exploratory Science Centres. The project converted a listed Great Western Railway shed to provide a flexible space for a wide range of hands-on science exhibits.

The existing reinforced concrete structure was sympathetically restored and adapted; new glazing at ground floor level was set back from the existing grid to create an arcade and allow the rhythm of the building’s frame to remain visible. A bridge from the first floor gallery leads to a planetarium, housed in a shiny stainless steel sphere 15m in diameter, and partially surrounded by water.

London, UK

WilkinsonEyre has transformed the first floor of the Science Museum in London to create the largest medicine galleries in the world. Containing more than 3,000 objects selected from the medical collections of the Science Museum and Wellcome Collection, the new galleries offer 3,000m² of permanent display, almost doubling the exhibition space.

The practice collaborated closely with curatorial and interpretation teams on the presentation of artefacts from the collections, drawing out the personal stories behind the objects and bringing them to life. The permanent exhibition also hosts four specially commissioned artworks by prominent artists, allowing visitors a different way to connect with the objects and stories on display.

We The Curious Bristol,

Medicine, The Wellcome Galleries, Science Museum

Mary Rose Museum Portsmouth, UK

Gasholders London

London, UK

Henry VIII’s favourite warship, the Mary Rose, sank during a battle with the French in 1545 with 500 men on board. WilkinsonEyre was commissioned to design a museum to permanently house the hull of the ship, which was raised from the seabed of The Solent near Portsmouth in 1982.

The hull, supported in a dry dock, requires highly specialist environmental conditions to preserve it, so the design takes an insideout approach, cradling the hull at the centre of the new museum.

A virtual hull has been created alongside this to represent the missing section, within which the original artefacts are displayed in context. These context galleries run the length of the ship, corresponding to the original deck levels and leading to further gallery space at the end of the dry dock.

Among the most distinctive historic structures to be retained in the regeneration of Kings Cross is a triplet of gasholder guide frames from 1867, now Grade II listed and a legacy of the area’s industrial past.

WilkinsonEyre’s celebrated scheme finds new use for these landmark structures by providing residential accommodation within the elegant cast iron frames. Three “drums”at differing heights suggest the movement of the original gasholders, which would have risen up or down depending on the pressure of the gas within. A courtyard makes a fourth, virtual, drum shape at the centre of the frames, celebrating their point of intersection.

Battersea Power Station

London, UK

One of London’s major landmarks, Battersea Power Station is being transformed for the 21st century. The refurbishment balances old and new to retain the building’s sense of scale and visual drama through elements such as the vast, six-storey central atrium and open, unobstructed turbine halls.

The designs respect the integrity of the historic landmark while also creating a new state-of-the-art events space; shops, restaurants and cafés; a public viewing platform; large open-plan office spaces; a 60-room boutique hotel, and a series of villas, apartments and penthouses positioned around a garden square. Apple will be the largest office tenant occupying more than 46,000m² over six floors.

Further Projects

21 Moorfields

London, UK

With development land in limited supply in every mature city, innovative solutions and collaborative team working are helping to unlock challenging sites. The new development at 21 Moorfields in an example of this approach.

Positioned directly above an existing London Underground station and a future Crossrail ticket hall, this complex oversite development project will deliver a new headquarters building for the City of London. Constraints include building over live rails, limited space for piling and preserving view corridors. The development covers approximately 64143m² and comprises two office buildings, enhanced pedestrian permeability and a new public square with high-quality retail and improved landscaping.

CIBC Square

Toronto, Canada

8 Bishopsgate

London, UK

CIBC Square will provide a major new mixed-use development and transport hub at the heart of the financial district. The scheme includes twin 250m-high towers flanking a rail corridor and linked at high level by a sky park, plus a new bus terminal for Metrolinx and connections into Toronto’s Union Station, subway and lightrail systems.

As the new headquarters for CIBC Bank, the towers will extend Toronto’s financial district towards Lake Ontario. Both towers feature a lightly folded glazed façade, creating a diamond pattern which adds a vertical scale and modulation contrasting with surrounding buildings. The first phase of this two-phase project is under construction including trading floors, retail and restaurants.

Designed for client Mitsubishi Estate London, the 71,000m² building is conceived as a series of stacked blocks in response to its urban context.

Redevelopment of the existing site provide a new highly-sustainable 50-storey building set within historic urban context of the City of London. In addition to high quality commercial and retail space, the building provides exceptional amenities, and public access at grade and terrace level.

Gateshead Millennium Bridge

Gateshead/Newcastle, UK

London, UK

Visually elegant when static and in motion, the bridge offers a great spectacle during its opening operation – during the day and at night.

The design is based on two graceful parabolic curves of over 100 metres, one forming the deck and the other supporting it and spanning between two new islands running parallel to the quaysides. Opening like an eyelid, the innovative bridge lets shipping on the Tyne pass beneath. For pedestrians and cyclists, this landmark structure links Newcastle’s quayside with Gateshead Quays – the new arts and cultural quarter to the south. It won the 2002 RIBA Stirling Prize.

This pedestrian and cycle swing bridge crosses Copenhagen’s Inner Harbour. In plan, it makes an elegant sweeping curve that connects two misaligned axes of the city plan, linking the city centre to the ramparts of Christianshavn, an important recreational across the water.

The continuously flowing lines of the bridge offer no clues as to how the bridge opens. Instead, the two opening spans create an element of surprise as they pivot on their supports and swing apart at mid-span. This opening motion provides a spectacle for viewers to enjoy while on a practical level clearing a 35m wide shipping channel.

Twisting high above Floral Street in Covent Garden, the Bridge of Aspiration provides the dancers of the Royal Ballet School with a direct link to the Grade I listed Royal Opera House. The award-winning design addresses a series of complex contextual issues, and is legible both as a fully integrated component of the buildings it links and as an independent architectural element.

The skewed alignment and different levels of the landing points dictate the form of the crossing, which is geometrically and structurally simple. A concertina of 23 square portals with glazed intervals are supported from an aluminium spine beam. These rotate in sequence for the skew in alignment, performing a quarter-turn overall along the length of the bridge. The result is an elegant intervention high above the street, which evokes the fluidity and grace of dance.

Lille Langebro Copenhagen, Denmark

Royal Ballet School: Bridge of Aspiration

Further Projects

Stratford Regional Station

London, UK

WilkinsonEyre redeveloped Stratford Station in 1994, vastly enhancing its capacity and at the same time creating a striking identity for the new Jubilee Line Extension.

The form of the building is a curved roof, springing from an upper level, which sweeps up to a tall glazed wall orientated toward the town centre and the terminating platforms of the tube lines.

This extruded form creates a single major space which unifies a number of disparate elements and identities of the various train services using the station. The completed building was the main arrival point for the visitors to the London 2012 Olympics.

HS2 Old Oak Common

London, UK

WilkinsonEyre has designed the HS2 Old Oak Common interchange, a major new hub providing connections to conventional rail services including the Elizabeth Line. The station will acting as a catalyst for regeneration and social infrastructure for this part of West London, the subject of a special planning & development corporation.

A series of underground high-speed platforms are linked by a shared overbridge providing connections to conventional rail services. The station’s distinctiveness is defined by a spectacular vaulted roof inspired by the industrial heritage of the adjacent Great Western Railway.

Achieving planning permission in May 2020, we are now delivering the scheme on site.

Emirates Air Line, London Cable Car

London, UK

This cable car across the River Thames represents an exciting addition to the capital’s infrastructure and is the first urban cable car system in the UK.

The crossing provides a valuable and much-needed link between the two major landmark venues of the O2 Arena and the ExCeL Exhibition and Conference Centre on the north and south banks of the river. This new physical link provides a direct connection as well as a dramatic and memorable experience for residents and visitors, and supports the vision of transforming this wider area into a bustling metropolitan district with new businesses, homes and job opportunities.

Splashpoint

Worthing, UK

WilkinsonEyre was appointed to design this new swimming pool for Worthing Borough Council following a RIBA Design Competition. The new pool complex includes a six lane, 25 metre pool; a combined learner/diving pool; indoor leisure pools with rapids, flumes and outdoor waters; a health and fitness centre; café; crèche and flexible space for other activities.

This new complex, located adjacent to the existing Aquarena and close to the town centre, is an exciting development on a unique seafront site. The design maximises the potential of the site with ‘ribbons’ of accommodation flowing from north to south to emphasise the connection between land and sea. Each pool has its own terrace, opening up the façade to animate the beachfront elevation and enliven this prominent location in line with the Council’s aspirations for an Active Beach Zone.

Olympic Basketball Arena, London 2012

London, UK

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games were billed as the most sustainable ever, and the design of the Basketball Arena was an important part of the architectural mix.

The challenge was to create a temporary building that would not only be simple to erect and sustainable in terms of its post-Games legacy, but also to provide a world-class sporting venue. The solution was a structure to accommodate up to 12,000 spectators for basketball, handball and wheelchair basketball and rugby, and where two-thirds of the materials and elements could be reused or recycled after the Games.

Compton & Edrich Stands, Lord’s Cricket Ground

London, UK

Our redesign of the eastern end of Lord’s complements the historic and contemporary context, while optimising seating provision, views and public amenities. To mitigate disruption, a rapidbuild design was developed to ensure that the stands were ready for the 2021 season.

The new Compton and Edrich stands have a harmonious relationship with the existing Media Centre and endorse the ‘Village Green’ analogy which remains at the heart of Lord’s identity. The proposals provide a range of seating and hospitality areas, new concourses that address the Nursery Ground, public realm and landscaping, and increasing the stands capacity from 9,000 to 11,500 seats.